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Thousands of Afghans have amassed on the tarmac at Kabul’s international airport in the hours after the Taliban captured the capital.
The chaotic scenes Monday at Hamid Karzai International Airport captured by news crews and cellphones convey a terror and desperate rush to escape the country, which is now overrun by Taliban militants in the lead-up to the complete departure of U.S. forces.
Taliban forces fanned out across Kabul on Sunday night as an official with the militant group said it would soon announce the creation of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” from the presidential palace in the capital.
That was the name of the country under Taliban rule before the militants were ousted by US-led forces after the 9/11 attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
The Taliban on Saturday captured a large, heavily defended city in northern Afghanistan in a major setback for the government, and were approaching the capital of Kabul, less than three weeks before the U.S. hopes to complete its troop withdrawal.
The fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, the country’s fourth largest city, which Afghan forces and two powerful former warlords had pledged to defend, hands the insurgents control over all of northern Afghanistan, confining the Western-backed government to the center and east.
The United States on Friday said it is “certainly concerned” by rapid Taliban advances in Afghanistan, adding that the terror group is trying to isolate Kabul as they have “taken over border crossing, highways and major intersections to control lines of communication and revenue”.
Addressing the press conference, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Kabul is not right now an “imminent threat environment”.
The Taliban captured two major Afghan cities — the country’s second- and third-largest after Kabul — and a strategic provincial capital on Thursday, further squeezing the embattled government just weeks before the end of the U.S. military mission there.
The seizure of Kandahar and Herat marks the biggest prizes yet for the Taliban, who have taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals as part of a weeklong blitz.